Incompatibilities moving from Python 2 to Python 3

Introduction

Unlike most languages, Python supports two major versions. Since 2008 when Python 3 was released, many have made the transition, while many have not. In order to understand both, this section covers the important differences between Python 2 and Python 3.

Remarks

There are currently two supported versions of Python: 2.7 (Python 2) and 3.6 (Python 3). Additionally versions 3.3 and 3.4 receive security updates in source format.

Python 2.7 is backwards-compatible with most earlier versions of Python, and can run Python code from most 1.x and 2.x versions of Python unchanged. It is broadly available, with an extensive collection of packages. It is also considered deprecated by the CPython developers, and receives only security and bug-fix development. The CPython developers intend to abandon this version of the language in 2020.

According to Python Enhancement Proposal 373 there are no planned future releases of Python 2 after 25 June 2016, but bug fixes and security updates will be supported until 2020. (It doesn't specify what exact date in 2020 will be the sunset date of Python 2.)

Python 3 intentionally broke backwards-compatibility, to address concerns the language developers had with the core of the language. Python 3 receives new development and new features. It is the version of the language that the language developers intend to move forward with.

Over the time between the initial release of Python 3.0 and the current version, some features of Python 3 were back-ported into Python 2.6, and other parts of Python 3 were extended to have syntax compatible with Python 2. Therefore it is possible to write Python that will work on both Python 2 and Python 3, by using future imports and special modules (like six).